


Even Unborn

by Haecceity



Series: They Say That The Happy Is Expensive (But The Ever After's Free) [3]
Category: Legend of the Seeker
Genre: Cara and Kahlan friendship, Dream Sequences, Existential Angst, F/F, F/M, Pregnancy, mention of sapphophobic murder, sort of Cara/Dahlia, unhappy pregnancy stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-05
Updated: 2014-11-05
Packaged: 2018-02-24 05:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2570003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haecceity/pseuds/Haecceity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cara said very firmly, “It is an honor to bear a child for Lord Rahl. Do you know why?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Even Unborn

Cara knew she was dreaming but she couldn’t seem to wake up. In front her were Richard and Kahlan as clear as if all the light in the world shown on them and only them. The rest of the world was dim and murky with shadows moving menacingly in the corner of Cara’s eye.

Richard was on top of Kahlan, his mouth on hers and his hand between her legs. Kahlan bucked under his touch and moaned his name while Cara tried to warn them about the shadows. They didn’t see or hear Cara and she strained to shout.

Forsythia touched Cara on the shoulder. “Have you told them about me?”

“They’re not listening,” Cara said angrily.

“Are you talking?” Forsythia asked.

Cara woke up to a view of trees and stars overhead. The moon barely penetrated the forest canopy. The sounds of Richard and Kahlan sleeping lulled Cara back away from the waking world.

***

Kahlan held herself straight and tall as she strutted into the garrison. “I need to speak to the commander,” she announced, pushing back her cloak so they could see she wore the white of the Mother Confessor. Richard stood slightly behind her to her right and Cara completed the triangle to her left. The three of them together watched the Midlander soldiers bustle about.

The commander exited into the flagged courtyard with a bit of breakfast still in his beard. He dropped to one knee to salute Kahlan hurriedly. “What do you require, Mother Confessor?”

“I need to take a complement of soldiers with me to Stowcroft.” Kahlan said calmly, noticing the way Cara’s fingers twitched toward her Agiels. “They have attempted to kill the Mother Confessor and I will not let that pass.”

“Of course not, Mother Confessor. I mean- At once, Mother Confessor.” He stood. “May we entertain you while you wait?”

“Go. I will wait here. I have much to do.” Kahlan said firmly.

Before the man had quite turned to go, Cara raised her hand to her mouth and brushed at where he had a bit of egg. The commander brushed his face, looked down at his glove, turned bright red, and hurried away.

With admirable speed an honor guard gathered in the courtyard and before noon they were on the road to Stowcroft.

***

Three days away from the village, Kahlan woke with a strange feeling. It take her a moment to place it because she had only heard about it, never felt it for herself. Under the covers of an inn bed, she slid her hand down to her navel and held it there, feeling the flickering fire of another life inside her body. The first thought after her astonishment cleared was that it was far too soon. She had too much to do. The second was to marvel at the feeling of a gift like her own flaming into existence.

She turned her head to Richard’s sleeping face and considered his reaction to her bringing troops to Stowcroft pregnant. She snuggled into his side and dozed fitfully.

***

“You can’t bring that child stealing bitch here!” A man whose name Cara couldn’t remember shouted at them.

Kahlan had her Mother Confessor face firmly in place. “You speak this way about one of the heroes who helped destroy the Baneling scourge,” she said in her official voice from inside a ring of soldiers. “Stowcroft village stands convicted of attempting to assassinate the Mother confessor.”

The crowd that had gathered to witness the Mother Confessor’s return roared defiance.

“Queen Milena or Lord Rahl or the Margrave of Rothenberg would answer such behavior by firing your village with you inside of it,” Kahlan bellowed back, her hands clenched into fists. “I am merciful! Every man between fifteen and sixty-five is sentenced to seven years labor!”

Richard’s head jerked to the side to frown at Kahlan in a way that made Cara suspect she hadn’t told him her plan. 

“Now that the D’Harans have withdrawn,” Kahlan continued after the crowd roared again and her guard deliberately set hands to their weapons, “we can start rebuilding the main highways. You will have the honor of helping make the Midlands whole once more.”

Cara was reminded eerily of the Kahlan she had seen on her first trip to Aydindril, stark and commanding. She felt a twitch of pride.

“You betrayed us!” Silas shouted over the crowd, pushing his way to the front.

“You asked for judgment and received it.” Kahlan answered coldly.

Cara saw the violence coming and felt the scream of her Agiels in her hands as Silas pushed one of the soldiers. The soldier backhanded him hard enough to draw blood and the fight was on. Everything was a dance of fists and feet and swords and flails and her Agiels guarding the Mother Confessor’s back. They had fought their way out before and this time they had a guard. The villagers were no match for them but facing punishment, they tried anyway. When it was over a number of men and women lay dead. People Cara had known as a child when the world had hurt less breathed their last at the hands of her friends for a second time.

Stomping on a man’s fingers as he grasped after a fallen pitchfork, Cara crossed the village square to where her sister stood watching. Silent tears poured from Grace’s eyes and Cara found herself tongue tied.

“What more have you come to take from me?” Grace asked hoarsely. “We’ll starve this winter if we don’t get the harvest in and how can we do that without the men?”

“Not by whining about it,” Cara snapped irritably. She saw Grace start to answer and spoke the question that had been much on her mind since Zedd had told her of her other selves. “There was a girl I was friends with, Dahlia. What happened to her?”

“Is that all you have to say?” Grace knotted her hands in her skirts.

“I will ask the Mother Confessor to send you men to help with the farming. Is that payment enough?”

An unfamiliar fire lit Grace’s eyes. “She’s in the graveyard. Four up and one in on the left side. Patience broke off her engagement to Horace and he found them together. He hit her in the head with a rock and it took her almost two days to die. Is that information enough?”

Cara gave Grace a long thoughtful look. She made herself watch the fire fade and be replaced by fear. “For now,” she said when Grace began to tremble.

Kahlan was directing the binding of the prisoners with Richard when Cara found her. “My sister requests further mercy: men to help with the farming while these serve you.” She said it so the prisoners could hear and noted which seemed relieved and which glared.

“Granted,” Kahlan said. “I would not leave my people to starve.”

“I have a grave to see.” Cara told Kahlan in a quieter tone. “Alone.”

Kahlan hesitated but Richard gave Cara a nod. “We were in too much of a hurry last time for you to say goodbye to your mother.”

Cara didn’t correct him and slipped away to the graveyard that was exactly how she remembered it. The westering sun cast long shadows from the headstones and the trees planted to commemorate the dead. It was a quiet place slightly higher than the village so it wouldn’t flood. There she followed Grace’s directions and found Dahlia’s grave. It was over a decade old, the grass long since grown on top of it. They were closer to the D’Haran practice of interring the dead than the Aydindril one of burning them.

Dahlia walked the Halls of Eternal Peace or she didn’t. Cara could remember the child when she focused. Another small, meek girl as she had been before Nathair had rescued her from becoming like her mother, like Grace, like the thousands of women across the land who could not have defended Richard and Kahlan and Zedd. But she could not picture the woman Dahlia might have been. She had a vague recollection, a child’s memory, of dark hair and blue eyes and soft babyish features. Trying to picture the adult only made her think of Kahlan standing tall and unbending as she delivered justice.

This Dahlia had died before Cara had earned her leathers. The Wizard had not spared Dahlia in his casting unless it was for a more pleasant afterlife. Cara hadn’t truly contemplated fate before but now… all Dahlia’s stories ended in death. As did Leo’s.

Cara placed her hand on the grass of the grave and could not mourn the girl buried below, could not remember her smile, could not know her except as a serious minded child. She had witnessed the liaisons and trysts among the Sisterhood of the Agiel and participated in them, never knowing what she was missing. Never suspecting the possibility. When she had pressed the Wizard weeks later he had told her, “She said she held your hand during the training.” At the look on her face he would not tell her more and she cursed her loss of control. She cursed Dahlia for dying before she could see the woman who could have been her friend and ally in the viper pit of Mord’Sith politics. She cursed the man who had killed her and the village that had not stopped him and the world that would not let her know the woman she could have been twice over but would let her know the possibility had existed. She cursed as silently as she had waiting alone for the training Mistresses to return. 

She did not cry.

It was full dark when she stood and left the grave behind. She closed the corner of her heart that felt as if she left Cara the schoolmistress and Cara the lover of Dahlia in the grave behind her.

***

Kahlan had taken to doing her corset lacings more loosely. The more rational part of her knew it was ridiculous. It would be months before her daughter was large enough to be harmed that way. It was just as ludicrous as her hesitancy to tell Richard about their daughter. Or the sensation that she could feel her body daily taking more steps to protect and nourish the small life in her abdomen.

As every Confessor was expected to bear daughters for the order, their sex education and knowledge of what pregnancies required for health was extensive. Confessors were immune to many of the illnesses and infirmities the average woman was threatened with but a baby was a baby. She needed extra blood to rush the food to her and the wastes away. She needed minerals and nutrients for growing her bones and organs. What Kahlan did not consume her daughter would take from her body, greedy for life as all small creatures were.

Sometimes it felt like Richard and Cara should be able to tell just by looking at her, she felt her daughter’s presence so strongly. But it hadn’t been enough time for her to grow tender or her hair to change or anything that would signal the alteration in their lives.

She needed to tell Richard so he could help her find the right things to eat so her teeth didn’t fall out and her daughter’s spine didn’t turn into one of the cautionary tales Lina had drilled her and her Sisters on. But if she told him he might insist on taking her back to Aydindril and then it might be years before she had a chance to see the outer reaches of her power for herself again.

“Is something wrong?” Richard asked, sitting beside her as she took her turn for preparing dinner.

“I’m pregnant,” Kahlan said with less self-assurance than she might have wished.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Cara sat, repairing a hole in one of her boots. “You’re not even late.”

“A Confessor knows!” Kahlan squawked indignantly.

Richard gave her the largest grin she could hope for and wrapped her in a tight, excited hug that she returned. His enthusiasm sparked a smile from her uncertainty.

“I want to continue the route we discussed.” Kahlan said, still smiling at him. A frown clouded his expression so she hurried to the reasons she’d laid out in her mind. “It’s been ages since a Confessor has been able to travel these roads. My people need to know stability is returning and that I am here for them. I need to hear their concerns and address as many as I can. And we should keep looking for Cara’s son. We-”

“There are still bandits everywhere,” Richard protested.

“She’ll be able to run for months. At least until winter.” Cara said quietly. “It’s no riskier than taking these roads in the first place.”

Richard looked from one woman to the other and sighed. “But if you start getting sick-”

“Straight to the healer.” Kahlan promised.

***

Cara dreamed that night of being with Darken Rahl. His face was between her legs, alternating pleasure there with taps of an Agiel against her side. An indistinct female presence joined them, stroking Cara’s hair. She had hair a few shades lighter than Darken Rahl’s and eyes a few shades darker.

“It is an honor to bear a child for Lord Rahl,” a toneless voice whispered in her ear.

***

The months to winter passed in a blur.

For Cara it was procession past the faces of dozens or hundreds of little boys. Little boys with green eyes full of fear and tears. Little boys with blue eyes full of the horrors of the Baneling attacks. Little boys with dark hair and dirt on their faces. Little boys with blond hair hiding eyes full of anger and defiance. And in each face she searched for something familiar: something of herself, something of Darken Rahl, something of Panis Rahl, something of her father. 

Every time they walked away without a child in tow she felt a little pang of relief.

Kahlan sat in judgment on disputes and feuds D’Haran disruption had allowed to take root while Richard fussed over her and Cara wandered to look at the local orphans. At Richard’s insistence they stayed more and more often in inns, Richard and Kahlan taking a bed and Cara unrolling her camp bed in front of the door.

One night, Kahlan awoke in the dark and felt the world turn around her to settle into a pattern she had never fully considered before. She placed a hand on her abdomen and felt what her mother had felt during her pregnancy and her mother and her mother and her mother. A line stretching unbroken back three thousand years. The beauty brought tears to Kahlan’s eyes.

On other nights Kahlan woke under blankets that made her far too hot and sweaty. She was sore and tired beyond what was reasonable. They had made only four fifths the progress they used to make. She was tender and hungry despite having eaten a full meal at dinner time. The anger brought tears to Kahlan’s eyes.

They made the Galacian capital just before the first snows fell.

***

Kahlan watched Cara’s delighted smile as she caught a large, wet flake in her outstretched hand and felt pleasure at the timing. Cara’s love of snow had not been her only reason for choosing to winter in the mountains of Galacia. It had been under D’Haran occupation since before she had gone to the Sisters of the Light and Kahlan was eager to let them know the Confessors still cared. It was also an excellent place for snow with its steep gabled roofs and its main castle on an easily defended mountain. The town below the palace spread in rings of old walls and newer buildings that used the old defenses for support. In the first of winter the city was all grey stone and brown mud and white-washed huts under heavy grey clouds.

Where Aydindril had ordinances about keeping the gates clear, it had been a long time since these main gates had rusted into place. The city was considerably less prosperous than when the main highways had run clear and paved to Aydindril and back but a large number of people still thronged the gates as Kahlan, Richard, and Cara entered.

By the time they reached the upper market, over an inch of snow lay on the ground to be trampled by people, horses, and goats. The wind pouring up the mountain implied the disposal of waste was more of a problem here than in Aydindril.

Cara and Richard eyed the place with wariness and curiosity respectively while Kahlan watched the outline of the fortress hunkered over the city growing larger and larger. The crowd thinned as they began to pass the residences of lesser nobility and then greater. Men in livery gave Richard and Cara dirty looks. It was no surprise when a handful of Watch officers at a smaller gate stopped them. 

Kahlan threw back her hood and demanded entrance. The Queen was in one of her winter palaces at a lower altitude but her seneschal made the Mother Confessor and her entourage welcome in the best guest rooms.

“I’m sleeping in the alcove,” Cara told them in no uncertain terms. “I’m not letting them separate us in this place.” She gave the smoke stained stone walls a dubious look as a draft made the candlelight flutter.

“You don’t have to-” Kahlan began.

Cara snorted and gave her a stern look, folding her arms. “I don’t know what you were thinking coming to such a drafty old place in the middle of winter.”

“I’ve never been here before. My mother spoke fondly of it,” Kahlan said, touching a velvet wall hanging placed to keep the place from becoming even colder and draftier.

Richard put his arm around Kahlan’s shoulders and kissed her. 

***

The Queen was opting to stay in the valley for the duration of the winter and Kahlan was sore from sitting in judgment for hours. She was working her way from the court to the merchants and tradesmen but it was a tangle of resentments and entitlements. The D’Harans had divided the people and turned them against one another. As usual, Darken Rahl’s wake was visible in angry rifts and a soiled mountain of broken promises. Kahlan suspected the Queen was staying away only partly in fear of tempting the Mother Confessor’s judgment.

Her head ringing with argument and counterargument, Kahlan pleaded a headache and retreated to the castle’s solar. A dark desire grabbed her heart to break the nose of the next man or woman who told her, “But Mother Confessor, you _have_ to understand….” She closed her eyes and focused on breathing the way the Sisters of Light had taught her, praying for the good of the souls of the conniving, backstabbing, ungrateful citizens under her protection.

Kahlan was still leaning back in her chair with her eyes closed when she heard footsteps on the old stone floor. It wasn’t Cara or Richard come to coax her down for something to eat that she saw when she opened her eyes. “What do you want?” Kahlan asked Shota sharply.

“I come with a warning but I see I am too late.” Shota said, gazing at Kahlan’s middle.

Glaring, Kahlan got to her feet with less than her former grace. “Say what you have to say.”

“You are bearing Richard’s son.” Shota said bluntly.

“That can’t be. Dennee had a son and it happens-”

“Once a generation. But you know how close you came to bearing Darken Rahl a son.” Shota suddenly looked more tired than Kahlan had ever witnessed, even when she had taken the guise of an elderly woman. “I had hoped… No matter. You’ve been told how monstrous the child of your union with Darken Rahl was. Richard, for all his good points, carries Rahl blood. You saw how powerful Zeddicus can be when he chooses to unleash his power. The magic your child will inherit from Richard is more potent even than that. Imagine a boy-child with access to such magic, the Rahl temper, and the power of Confession.”

Kahlan felt a tingle of cold along her spine as she tried not to picture it. “Why are you telling me this now?”

“I tried to make it to your wedding but I am not the only witch in the world nor am I the most powerful.” Shota looked at the floor and formed the words as if they tasted bitter. “I am, however, the witch with your welfare closest to her heart. I do not demand immediate action but if you do not do what you know you must, then I will come on the child’s seventh day and do it for you.” Shota waved a hand and was suddenly no longer in the room.

Kahlan sank down into her chair, feeling as if the life caged within her skin were draining the strength and agility from her to hoard it for himself.

***

Cara found Kahlan weeping and stopped in the doorway of their suite. She started to back away but then remembered the many conversations that had been had with her over the last few months about how pregnant women were treated in this part of the world. “Can I get you anything?” she asked with a stiffness born of awkwardness.

Kahlan stopped sharply, her shoulders jerking. “No, I just- Please sit.”

Entering the room with more trepidation than she had felt hunting shadrin, Cara did as as she was asked. “I can watch over you. You do the difficult part.” She’d meant it as a joke but Kahlan started helplessly sobbing all over again. Cara sat with her hands not quite touching Kahlan, the uncertainty she felt around such open displays of emotion driving coherent thought from her. She was close enough that she could tell the Confessor was muttering something but it was obscured by sobs. Usually that wouldn’t interfere with Cara’s comprehension but usually people were trying to say either “No, it hurts,” or, “Stop, stop, I’ll tell you everything.”

With a visible effort, Kahlan sniffed and said more distinctly, “Shota says it’s a boy.”

“When was this?”

“Two weeks ago. She says she’ll kill him if we don’t.” Another sob wracked Kahlan.

Threats were in Cara’s comfort zone. She responded by taking Kahlan’s hands firmly. “What do you want?”

“I don’t know,” Kahlan said miserably.

Squeezing slightly, Cara said very firmly, “It is an honor to bear a child for Lord Rahl.”

“Richard’s not-”

“Do you know why?” Cara continued implacably.

“Because Darken Rahl wanted you to-”

“Because a Rahl always has enemies.” Cara squeezed Kahlan’s hands more firmly and then let up some of the pressure but didn’t let go. “Even unborn. To carry his child is to fight a battle for him. Sometimes battles must be lost to win the war.” She looked Kahlan in the eye, refusing to flinch from the pity or contempt she might find there. “You are the general of this battle, you decide.”

“That’s all it is to you?” Kahlan asked breathlessly. “Another fight?” Something in her expression softened.

“Every fight is your life when it’s happening.” Cara spoke the obvious truth. It was something she had thought hard on between her Sisters’ betrayal and her firsthand look at the destruction a different son of Darken Rahl had wrought.

The pity Cara had feared was there and an incomprehension. But Kahlan pressed her lips together and they stopped trembling. She sucked in a deep shuddery breath and straightened her shoulders. “I’ll tell Richard this evening.”

Cara stood behind Kahlan as she and Richard planned their response to Shota’s threat. Through the blustering and the shouting and the crying, Cara stood near enough to Kahlan to feel her heat in the cold room.

Cupping Kahlan’s face in his hands, Richard ended the argument by murmuring softly, “We can deal with it, whatever happens. Our son will be fine.” He continued reassuring Kahlan gently until she leaned her head on his shoulder and sighed.

Cara backed away to give them privacy for what came next.

***

As soon as the passes thawed enough for an attempt to get back to lower ground, their party was back to living on the road. Their pace was considerably slower than it had been at the start.

While Kahlan paused to make water yet again, Cara scanned the trees. A little boy was watching them with keen green eyes from under a tousled mop of blond hair. She watched him back and he came forward.

Richard noticed and put on the overly wide smile he usually used with children. “Hey there, where’d you come from?”

“Da’s farm,” the child said, pointing.

“You should get back to your chores,” Richard said in a tone that aimed to be both scolding and friendly.

The boy flushed and ran up the road without another word, Cara’s eyes following him until he was out of sight.

“You alright?” Richard asked.

“Fine,” Cara lied.

***

Cara’s dream was half memory and half fantasy. She was nineteen and pregnant once more, back in the room she had stayed in at the People’s Palace. Darken Rahl was standing beside the bed as she had woken to see him every time he came to visit her during the final portion of her pregnancy. The part of her that knew how this ended saw that he was afraid to sleep beside another.

“Is something troubling you, my lord?” Cara asked as she had not back then. Then she had risen from the bed; awkward, sore, and lustful, to pull him back into it.

“It’s of no consequence,” Darken Rahl said, touching his lips in thought.

“My Lord, what will become of my child?” The part of her dream self that was nineteen knew the child was destined for the Dragon Corps. The years of experience since then brought the flicker of General Trimack’s face to the shadows in the corners of the room.

“The Dragon Corps, of course,” Darken Rahl’s smile was false.

“You would put your child near your father’s loyalists?” Cara thought of all the enemies Lord Rahl possessed; lords and ladies, soldiers, and hundreds of common folk who would wish Lord Rahl to feel the pain he had inflicted on them.

Rahl’s face clouded with anger and some part of her knew that the real Darken Rahl would punish her insolence now. Instead, he favored her with a look of tiredness mixed with a raw, aching need she had once thought meant he needed _her._ Or, at least, someone enough like her to make no difference. She had been favored and at nineteen that had been enough.

“I will do whatever is necessary to protect my own,” Rahl said harshly. He placed his hands on her swollen belly and glared with eyes she knew now had seen the Keeper’s dungeons long before he’d met her. The part of her dream self that knew that, also knew he’d already made a deal with the Keeper for power.

“And if your enemies attempt to kill our son as they killed you?” Cara heard herself ask.

“I would rather see him dead than used as a weapon against me,” he said, breathing harshly. 

“If my Lord Rahl asked me to end this, I would.” Cara said.

Rahl grabbed her hands as she had grabbed Kahlan’s in the waking world. “No.” It was a simple word with a wealth of power behind it.

A tension Cara hadn’t known she felt released in her chest. A wave of emotion crashed over her. It was not forgiveness or a sense of peace. It was hot and stung in her eyes and throat. She saw the need in his eyes that she couldn’t fill and cupped his face, running her thumb over his lips as he had once done to her while she knelt before him. “Goodbye, my Lord.”

Cara turned away and left him in the shadows of that old bedchamber. She grasped the familiar brass handle of the door and stepped out into the corridor. She was not nineteen and she was not pregnant. She closed the door firmly.

“There’s a new bard in the square.” Forsythia said from the shadows to Cara’s right. “Do you want to come see?”

Cara woke with tears on her face.

***

Kahlan woke in the dark to urinate, thinking of a small thing growing large and hungry.

“We should travel the rest of the way back to Aydindril by carriage.” Cara’s voice said from her camp bed after the tinkling sound finished.

Making a sound of protest, Kahlan made an effort to rearrange her skirts.

“Your people either know you care or don’t by now.” Cara said before going for the below the belt hit. “And you’re too vulnerable to be doing this without a larger guard now. It’s a pity we don’t have more Mord’Sith.”

“What about finding your son?” Kahlan asked, surprising herself with an edge in her voice.

“Kahlan,” Cara said softly and thickly, visible only in generalities of light and shadow in the pre-dawn. “Either he is dead or he is with people who are withholding him deliberately or he is with people who have no idea who he is.” She raised a ghost of a hand at Kahlan’s sharply indrawn breath. “I will look more later but looking will not change this. There is only one man we could have forced to tell us the truth and he’s dead.”

“Egremont,” Richard said. “She’s right. We should focus on protecting George now.”

Closing her eyes and admitting defeat, Kahlan murmured, “Yes. I guess we should.”


End file.
